Technology for WiFi/Bluetooth and WiMAX Coexistence

Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Mobile WiMAX) is useful as next-generation wireless broadband access technology based on OFDMA. For it to proliferate, the radio interference between WiMAX, which is operated on the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands, and WiFi/Bluetooth, which is located on the Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band (2.4 GHz), needs to be resolved. Fujitsu has developed some proprietary coexistence technology as an effective way to do this, until a countermeasure of enhancing the IEEE specification is deployed in a few years. Our developed coexistence technology does not require any modifications to be made to the current specifications for backward compatibility. It works by using automatic repeat requests (ARQ). There were concerns about the technology’s adverse effect on system throughput, but no such effect was observed when operating at 75% of system capacity or less. We evaluated this in a simulation. This paper describes the issues regarding WiFi/Bluetooth and WiMAX coexistence, and Fujitsu’s proprietary coexistence technology.